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Comment by WoahNoun | Hacker News Reader

American schools are not a monolith. There are some of the world's best schools and (first) world's worse schools. If you could afford a fancy school in the UK, you were likely in a nice neighborhood in the US with enough property tax base for that neighborhood to afford a good public school. The US's problem is that school funding is local and most neighborhoods don't have that property tax base to afford a good school. There is very little top down control and parental involvement in poor neighborhoods with poorly funded schools.

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Baltimore City has the 5th highest per-student funding out of the 100 largest school districts in the country, with $15,793 per student per year [0]. The issue is that no amount of school funding can substitute for involved parents and a stable home environment.

[0] - https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/governor-lar...

>The US's problem is that school funding is local

If your problem statement were true, I'd expect that I'd see a strong correlation at the state level between per student spend at the city/town level and test scores. I won't say there's no correlation but it's a fairly weak one. For example, many urban school districts have both bottom of the barrel results with some of the greatest spend.

Added: You also see disparities between states. Mississippi outspends Utah per student. Which one do you think has better outcomes. And New York dwarfs everyone else in spend even though most NYC public schools are notoriously bad.

This pretends that test scores are a meaningful metric for the success of school funding when we know that's not true. How money was spent is just as important how much. Which it seems is the argument you're making. Where I think you're missing nuance is in recognizing that the most meaningful comparison is not from state to state, where the lines are blurred. It's much more meaningful to compare outcomes from neighboring districts.

And, in that comparison, it's extremely well documented that wealthy neighborhoods have significantly better outcomes than their poorer neighbors.

>extremely well documented that wealthy neighborhoods have significantly better outcomes than their poorer neighbors

Sure. But wealthy neighborhood correlates with a bunch of other things than high property values and typically relatively high property taxes which fund schools. It also tends to correlate to successful people, often well-educated, with at least one parent who spends a lot of time involved with their children's schoolwork, other types of support including tutoring if necessary, etc. So it's more complicated than the local public school has more money and spends that money on the right things.

> This pretends that test scores are a meaningful metric for the success of school funding when we know that's not true.

Test scores are meaningful, but they aren’t absolute. To say test scores are meaningless is not true. The reason tests are used, and probably overused, is to have some sort of generalizable metric.

Just because tests have flaws doesn’t mean they are worthless. I think more focus should be spent on better tests, and fewer, not on doing away with them.

There’s some magical thinking that a country of 330M will be able to holistically evaluate kids across the country in a way that is useful for funding allocation.

> pretends that test scores are a meaningful metric

I agree. Having the student sign an affidavit that they know math is good enough for me.

100% agree. Middle-class American schools are actually very good by international standards. The reason US test scores are low is because of a long left tail of failing schools in low income areas.

> The US's problem is that school funding is local

Maybe that's the answer then? Abolish school districts, all public schools should be controlled by the state government? Then local taxes won't pay for schools, only state and federal taxes will. That's the system we have here in Australia, and it seems to work okay.

We already spend a shitload of money on education here, and it's crap. Same with healthcare. Our spending is not the problem.

Spending more money on schools will not fix a social problem.

It isn't just about how much money you spend, it is also about how the money is distributed, which actors get it and what they spend it on.

If state governments took over control of schools and local school districts were abolished, that might well not lead to any change in the overall amount of money spent on public education, but it would very likely lead to changes in how and where that money was spent.

If kids don’t show up 50% of the time and the mom doesn’t care, and the Dad is long gone. Kids friends think learning makes you into a sell out.

Money isn’t going to solve that.

I agree that changing funding models can’t address broader social issues. But at least the school can reach out to the parent(s) and say "your child is skipping school and failing", which this mother claims they did not. Either the mother is being untruthful, or else the school really did fail here in a way which is independent of the social issues of the child and their friends and family. And if the later is the case, changing administrative and funding structures might actually make some difference. Not to the ultimate problem of the child's social deprivation, but at least to the parent(s) saying "we had no idea".

My wife’s a teacher, deals with lying parents constantly.

“You never told me!” Umm we had 27 emails on the topic, you responded on half them. We scheduled 10 conferences and you showed up to none of them.

To add to what the problem is not: the dedication of teachers, like others have said. I've known teachers from all kinds of public schools. Almost to the last, they are not just interested in but desperate for their students to succeed. (Often resulting in grade inflation and ill-advised passing.)

Also, most parents would really rather their kid succeed. It's easier for them that way.

What does it leave? The kids. They resist education because it's hard and involves work; that's only natural. Some more than others, though, and having TV and games competing with school these days makes that number a lot higher than the only other option was rolling a hoop with a stick. Unsuccessful students drag their whole class back with them, because again, the teacher wants them to succeed. So it looks like when you have a critical mass of failing students - 20% maybe? - you descend below the event horizon and the whole school becomes irredeemable.

The way it actually works in the US is that half the money comes from local taxes, and the other half from the state: https://conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/2017/10/04/chart-shows-.... The state money is used to even out the local funding, with poor districts getting a lot more state funding. Here is the breakdown for Maryland: https://conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/2017/10/04/chart-shows-...

This isn’t true. Only half of school funding comes from local taxes. The rest comes from federal and state taxes, and levels out the local funding. You can see this clearly in the breakdown of school funding in Maryland: https://conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/2017/10/04/chart-shows-...

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